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Monthly Archives: November 2013

Thirteen years may have passed since the original release of Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, but I still remember pulling out the 263-page user’s manual, feeling my eyes widen in intimidation at stats like “THAC0,” and chucking it to the side and jumping in without it. I don’t regret it. Then, as now, Baldur’s…

For much of the past year, it’s been fashionable to use Diablo III as a standard for other action RPGs, but probably not in the way Blizzard intended. Players of Torchlight II occasionally voiced dissatisfaction with the series’ Pixar-esque aesthetic, but developer Runic Games’ effort was almost universally praised for its singular focus on loot…

Player housing isn’t quite as new to World of Warcraft as this weekend’s announcement at BlizzCon 2013 may have made it sound. After all, we saw Blizzard’s first stab at it with Mists of Pandaria’s Sunsong Ranch. Once fully upgraded by befriending the denizens of the fertile Valley of the Four Winds, the place could…

Several hours into XCOM: Enemy Within, pumping bullets into extraterrestrials and sending aircraft to chase UFOs, I found myself thinking of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. Rest assured, there are no dragons here, but Firaxis’ beloved tactical shooter follows much the same model as Capcom’s role-playing game in offering what some may call an “ultimate” edition…

Much like 2010′s Cataclysm expansion, Warlords of Draenor seeks hope in the days of Warcraft past. Then as now, it’s a risky move. Even now, I recall how excited I grew at the thought of revisiting lands I loved when WoW was fresh, but Cataclysm had barely run half its course before Blizzard’s nostalgia started…

I flinched as a white pufferfish man attacked me by hurling blood, and it wasn’t even its own. Moments before, it had sprinted past me to munch on a pile of zombie corpses I’d left in my wake, and then it came back to drown me in their entrails. I’d seen hints of it before,…

Wargaming has made a lot of noise about how much they’ve accelerated the World of Tanks experience for its upcoming debut on the Xbox 360, but it was the lingering nods to slow and thoughtful gameplay that hooked me. Even three minutes in, I could feel its effects. Normally, multiplayer matches on Xbox Live kick…